Sydney - The Australian government Thursday announced
drastic measures to tackle the sexual abuse of children catalogued in
a recent report on Aboriginal communities in the far north of the
continent.
They include a six-month moratorium on the sale of alcohol in
remote Aboriginal communities and the drafting in of police officers
from outside the Northern Territory.
Howard said parents who continued to refuse to send their children
to school would have their welfare payments docked. All Aboriginal
children under 16 would undergo a medical examination and a permit
system that kept journalists out of Aboriginal communities would be
scrapped.
'We are dealing with children of the tenderest age who have been
exposed to the most terrible abuse from the time of their birth
virtually,' Howard told Parliament. 'Any semblance of maintaining the
innocence of childhood is a myth in so many of these communities and
we feel very strongly that action of this kind is needed.'
The report handed to the Northern Territory government earlier
this month noted that child sexual abuse was evident in all 45
Aboriginal communities in far-north Australia that inspectors visited.
'This is a national disgrace, it's a disaster, and it's something
that should never happen in this country,' Indigenous Affairs
Minister Mal Brough said when commenting on the report. 'We should
all find it absolutely abhorrent and should be doing everything in
our power to fix it.'
Around 500,000 of the 20 million Australians identify themselves
as Aborigines. Their life expectancy is 17 years shorter than other
Australians. Suicides are twice the national rate, murders are six
times as high and they are 11 times more likely to be imprisoned than
other Australians.
Sixty per cent of Aboriginal children don't finish high school and
only 12 per cent go on to some form of higher education.
The Northern Territory has around 70,000 Aborigines. What Howard
has promised will override the powers of the Northern Territory
government.
Howard was unapologetic, asking: 'What matters more - the
Constitutional niceties or the care and protection of young
children?'
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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